A Scene on the Dapoi River.
To revert to the subject of names; from all that I have read, and from personal observation, it seems that all Borneans recognize the sanctity of names; of this we may find traces among all the primitive people of the earth. Before the formal ceremony of naming a child, for instance, has been performed, the child has no recognized place in the community, and a mother in enumerating her children would never think of mentioning one that had died before it was named, even though it had lived a year. Before the ceremony, the intended name is known to no one except the parents, and, for them to mention it, is strictly permantang until the river water has been poured on the child's head. A Kayan will never tell you his name, but when asked he invariably turns to some one sitting near him and asks him to pronounce the name which to the owner is ineffable. For a man to mention the name of his dead father or mother is a reckless flying in the face of providence. After a serious illness the name should be changed and never uttered again, lest the evil spirits revisit their victim; under a new name they will be likely to pass him by. On one occasion, recognizing a man that I had seen on a former visit, but, at the moment forgetting his name, I enquired what it was; the name, however, struck me as entirely unfamiliar. He afterward acknowledged that he had been very sick since I last saw him and now bore a new name; only the assurance that the spirits could not harm him through a white man induced him at last to whisper to me his former name. This change of name to deceive the fates extends even to inanimate objects, and to animals which are to be caught or trapped. When hunting for camphor, the name of the object of their search must be never mentioned; it is always spoken of as "the thing that smells." Even all the instruments, which they use in collecting the valuable drug, have fanciful names, while the searchers talk in a language invented solely for those who collect camphor. Unless they conform to all these requirements, the camphor crystals, which in this particular variety are found only in the crevices of the wood, will elude them and their search be fruitless. When the people go Tuba fishing, which consists of poisoning the stream with the juice of the Tuba root, and thus stupefying the fish and making them rise to the surface, where they can be easily caught in nets or speared, they never say that they are going after fish, but after the leaves which float down stream.
These and many other customs relative to the naming of things are all founded on the same idea of the potency and mysticism inherent in a name, which may be found in the legends of the old Egyptians, wherein the power of the great king and god Ra depended on the fact that no one knew his real name, until Isis by stratagem got it from him; and forthwith his power left him. It was this same idea that prevented the Hebrew from ever speaking the name of the Most High; it is probably the same thought which prompts the Japanese to change a person's name after death lest by mentioning the one known during life the spirit of the dead should be recalled from the other world.
The downfall of the god Ra brings to mind another superstition of which I have noticed a remnant among the Borneans also, the power of working charms with the saliva. When the great god Ra became so old that he no longer had control of his lower jaw, Isis collected some of his saliva which dropped upon the ground below his throne, and mixing it with clay, made a snake of it. (I quote from the "Turin Papyrus," of which Mr. Edward Clodd gives a translation in his recent and valuable little book called "Tom Tit Tot.") This snake Isis left in Ra's path; as he passed by, it bit him, and to relieve him of his agony Isis persuaded him that the only thing to be done was to tell her his true name that she might drive out the pain from his bones. This he finally did, and with disastrous results. I instance this to show the antiquity of the superstition that the saliva is potent as an ingredient of charms; the Kayans illustrate this, in the manner whereby they elude an evil spirit which may have been following them on a journey on the river. They build a small archway of boughs on the bank just before they arrive at their destination. Underneath this arch, they build a fire and, in single file, all pass under, stepping over the fire and spitting into it as they pass; by this act they thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and emerge on the other side free from all baleful influence. Another instance, is where they are throwing aside the signs of mourning for the dead; during the period of mourning they may not cut their hair nor shave their temples, but as soon as the mourning is ended by the ceremony of bringing home a newly-taken head, the barber's knife is kept busy enough. As every man leaves the barber's hands, he gathers up the hair, and, spitting on it, murmurs a prayer to the evil spirits not to harm him. He then blows the hair out of the verandah of the house.
All these parallelisms, in the modes of thinking, among men in far removed quarters of the earth, do not, I think, necessarily imply that there has been a transmission of thought from one race to the other, but that there is a certain round of thought through which the brain leads us, and in development we must all have followed along the same path. Some races have made more rapid strides than others, possibly owing to natural surroundings, and in their strides have left the others centuries behind. Almost within the memory of our grandfathers, in this country, witches were burned, and from this there is only a step back to the Dayong of Borneo. Indeed, whosoever sees these people and lives with them their everyday life, must regard them, after a not very long time, merely as backward pupils in the school of life. Let me say in conclusion, that he would have an unresponsive heart that could not feel linked in a bond of fellowship with these people, and that God has made of only one blood all nations of the earth, when he hears a Bornean mother crooning her child to sleep with words identical in sentiment with "Rock-a-bye Baby,"—what though the mother's earlobes are elongated many an inch by heavy copper rings, her arms tattooed to the elbow, and her blackened teeth filed to points. Once upon a time I heard a Kayan mother soothing her little baby to sleep, and the words of the lullaby which I learned are as follows:—
From the River's mouth the birds are straying,
And the Baiyo's topmost leaves are swaying;
The little chicks cheep,
Now my little one sleep,
For the black house-lizard, with glittering eye,
And the gray-haired Laki Laieng are nigh!
Sleep, dear little one, sleep!
For those philologically inclined I append the original:—
Lung koh madang Manoh
Migieong ujong Baiyo
Mensip anak Yap
Lamate Telyap, Telyap abing,
Lamate Laki Laieng oban!
Ara we we ara!